


trust tastes something like blackberry tarts

by Ecipoe



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Hi I don’t use chronological order so good luck, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:09:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 22,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26414695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ecipoe/pseuds/Ecipoe
Summary: Nehris Lavellan has been dealt a terrible hand. She is surrounded by humans who put her on a pedestal never to go home to her people. And worse, some kind of magic has attached itself to her. There is never a space that feels safe from prying eyes and rumor, but sometimes in the quiet of Haven mornings, she finds a little peace next to that odd Warden.In which Nehris learns to love a shem.
Relationships: Blackwall | Thom Rainier/Female Lavellan, Blackwall/Female Inquisitor
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

Nehris Lavellan is two and twenty when she finds herself some kind of heretical religious symbol of the humans. 

For the Dalish, this is not very old at all. 

Sure, she has her vallaslin. Nehris is old enough to have tasted blood. She is a Dalish hunter. She’s familiar with the kill. 

Not usually with something humanoid, but familiar. 

Nehris is two and twenty and these humans want her to put together the heavens. She is no Keeper. She is no first. Nehris does not have magic, aside from whatever it is that has embedded itself in her palm. And it hurts. They do not seem to care how it hurts. How it has reached its foul roots into her veins and rips at her with each pulsing throb. She is young. She is far from her people. And she is frightened. 

Scared little elf girls end up dead. 

She knows this. 

So, Nehris stands strong like Iron-Bark. She turns her arrows on men, and swallows down the way it twists her stomach. She learns how to dismantle a man with her blades, just like she learned to dismantle deer and rabbits. It is bloody work. Nehris hopes being covered in blood makes her look bigger, more threatening. Like a bird. It does. It works. The Herald of Andraste, with sharp teeth and sharp blades who makes quick work of demons. Rumors spread. She does not want to be here. She does not want their attention. 

Dalish and attention go together like kings and poison.

Which is to say, badly.

She does not trust these humans. They will kill her the second she fixes their heavens. They will discard her like so much trash. She knows this too. They ask what clan she is from, she tells them her clan is dead. Gone. They will not have her people after her. They will not have the babies and the keeper and the hunter she is sweet on. She lies to these humans and keeps her distance.

Nehris Lavellan is two and twenty, resident of Haven, Herald of Andraste when she meets him. 

He reminds her of a grizzled old bear. But he’s honest. Tells her she isn’t what he expected. Doesn’t lie when he says he thought she’d be human. 

She likes that.

He’s the first one to ever sit back and say, ‘I wasn’t expecting an elf’ without trying to justify it with some silly story about Shartan.

Besides, this warden lets her be. He lets her chase nugs through the snow, and climb trees, and sit out by the frozen lake in quiet. Even better, he doesn’t tell them where she has wandered off to when the important humans come asking. He lets her have her moments of quiet. They share a lot of those moments. Her, across the snow and ice watching him. Him, leaned back against the stable walls, watching her. A quiet understanding.

She is something feral and he knows not to push that. Respects it. 

Plus she’s too young for this. 

Too young to die. 

Some days, she brings him bribes. Those are the days she goes on the long walks, only returning when the last of the sun’s rays dance on the hard packed snow around Haven. He suspects she is stealing the things she brings him. Apple tarts, a bottle of wine, a few coins from her pocket, one time a mabari figurine. He lets her set the items down on the nearest crate or barrel, gives her space to back up, then and only then does he slowly take the items. 

The others don’t need to know she went to get some air.

Besides, he finds it a little funny that she thinks she has to bribe him.

One day, sun still high in the sky, she comes back early. He noticed the rabbits dangling from her belt immediately. She’s been hunting. They had been low on food since the latest group of pilgrims came through, but Nehris seemed all but immune to such concerns. Most of the people were sure she didn’t even speak Trade she was so quiet.

Had he not heard her speak himself, he’d believe those rumors. 

She approaches him first. Slowly. Cautiously. All her muscle cooling and uncoiling, each step precise and calculated, eyes watching their surroundings. He wonders if he frightens her. 

“Warden Blackwall,” her accent forming the name thick. “Would you care to help me cook and distribute these?”

“Of course, my lady.”

Her nose wrinkles at that. 

That evening, Blackwall learns that Nehris is not who they think she is. It comforts some small part of him to know there’s more to her than meets the eye. Most of Haven think her some flouncy air brained elf who happened who be blessed by Andraste. And the others, those who have seen her on the battlefield, think her a warrior the likes no one has ever seen. He learns she is neither of those things. 

Nehris skins the rabbits and guts them with a kind of controlled grace that seems almost second nature, and it tells him everything. She is a hunter, not a soldier. The knowledge she employs with cleaning them tells him she is much smarter than she lets on. The cuts of the meat, made to make the most of the kill. It’s all so, calculated.

Nehris is calculated.

His palms sweat. She hands him the rabbit meat, ready for the fire he has prepared. It is like she looks straight through him. Like he is nothing. Maker, she looks at him like he is nothing. He cannot help the shiver that passes through him. 

“Warden Blackwall.” She says his name like a fact later while she is watching the sun descend. “Will you, at least, miss me when I die here?”

The question shakes him.

“What are you talking about? You aren’t going to die.”

The hollow look she gave him haunted him for weeks. 

A few weeks after the question, they are busy wandering the hills of the Hinterlands. Apparently, she is to stop a war she didn’t know was happening here. They had stumbled straight into a rift. Her, himself, The Seeker, and that strange elven apostate. What a sorry bunch, he thinks.

Nehris had made quick work of the demons. 

It impressed him.

Until he watched her body lock, seize, and collapse. A castle of cards. The rift had made a sharp cracking sound, and Nehris hit the ground. He was over her immediately, shielding her from the stones shooting out of the rift with his shield. Her eyes rolled back, body wracked with tremors, hand blazing green. He had felt her buck against his protection, hands scrabbling for purchase on the ground. Rocks under her nails. The sounds in the back of her throat, the garbling, it nearly undid him. She was small at this moment. Small and fragile and young, and Maker, he had wanted to call it. Enough. They had made her suffer enough. Fuck the Breach. Fuck this fade rift in particular.

This poor girl had her life ahead of her. She deserved more.

As quickly as it had come upon her, it was over. Nehris has propped herself on an elbow and kicked him out of the way, eyes glassy with pain. She had reached up, closed her fist, and shrieked. The sound felt like it carved itself into his very skull. Then the rift was no more. The blood pouring from her mouth was a stark red under the light of her hand. 

New things to haunt him, he supposed. 

Solas had rushed to her to evaluate whatever was happening. Nehris had shoved him away. 

A few days later, still camping out in the countryside. They are sitting around the fire. Solas has wandered off to bathe, and Cassandra to find firewood. He stayed. Someone has to keep her safe. The world is asking too much of this woman for him to leave her alone. 

“Does it hurt?” And when she had looked at him bewildered from where she was cleaning her blades he clarified. “Your hand. Closing those rifts. All of it.”

The sharp clear singing of the whetstone, the popping of fire, and quietly, so quietly he leaned closer to hear.

“More than you could ever imagine.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? You did not do this.”

He supposes that is fair.

Nehris Lavellan is three and twenty the night she closes the Breach. She is told her body failed her. That Cassandra had carried her back to her little cottage at Haven. She is told by Adan and Solas that she is not well, not at all. 

She does not have time to be unwell. 

Not when the bells are chiming, and people are shrieking outside the cottage. 

She drags her failing body out of the bed. Kicks off the covers with all her force. Shrugs on a leather jacket and whatever clothing happened to be closest, and stumbles out the door. 

And she falls. They all see it. Nehris stands against the beast, buys them time to live, and she falls.

Blackwall feels particularly bitter about all this. He had been fond of her. She deserved better.

“Do you believe in your Maker, Blackwall?” She had asked him once at Haven. The light had made the gold in her dark hair shimmer and dance, and he had been a little weak in the knees when he had answered her, “Sometimes.” She had pursed her lips like she did whenever he gave her an answer she didn’t like. “Your Chantry teaches he abandoned you. How can you pray to a god that left you to suffer?”

“I don’t know.” He had told her. It sufficed. 

As she went about her business, she had told him, hours after their conversation. 

“I don’t believe in your Maker. But I do believe in you.”

It was more than enough. 

And he had let her fall.


	2. Chapter 2

Nehris watches curiously from where she is sprawled across one of the smithy crates as Blackwall chops wood. He knows she is there. All of Haven must know she’s there. The woman is sunbathing, like a cat, in the weak winter sunshine and watching him.

It is a little unnerving. 

A few times now Inquisition runners have approached her only for her to hiss and wave them off.

She hissed.

He is not sure why that amuses him so much. 

He wonders if she hasn’t never seen anyone chop wood before. Surely, the Dalish do not feed their fires on twigs gathered from the ground. They must use logs. With their craftsmanship, they have to know how to cut wood. So why would she be watching him? 

He finishes chopping the last three logs into decent firewood and delivers them to Harrit. Maker knows the man always needs more to keep these soldiers outfitted. Her eyes follow him. Sea glass green and languid, and she rolls onto her belly as he grabs a flask. 

“Where are you going?” She asks him. Blackwall blinks, ties the flask to his waist.

He was headed to the lake. The water would be miserably cold, which is just what he needs. Chopping wood is work, and work makes men hot, and he could use a splash of cool water on the back of his neck. Plus, it would help to clean up the sweat on his brow. 

“A walk.” He tells her. Not a total lie. It is a walk to the lake. She hums, kicks her feet and runs her fingers over the edge of the crate. 

“But I’m not wearing my good boots.”

He isn’t really sure what to say to that. She’s implying she was going to go with him. It’s not that he wouldn’t enjoy the company. It’s just, not appropriate, to wash up in front of a lady. He wants to protest, but she has scrambled off the crate and practically skipped over to him.

Too close for comfort. 

Bright eyes set on him, she cranes her neck to look up at him. 

“My lady-“

“Nehris. My name is Nehris.”

“Right, I was hoping to go on my walk alone. Get a little air.”

She nods slowly, safely, full of understanding. Maker, has she always been that small?

“Here’s the problem, Blackwall. If I am not with you, or at least pretending to keep you company, they don’t leave me be. When I’m next to you it’s Inquisition and Warden business. So they have to leave me be. But if they even think I might be free, I’ll be dragged kicking and screaming back to the Chantry. I do not want to go back to the Chantry.”

He is greatly amused by that image. Cassandra, dragging the Herald of Andraste with her glowing hand and all, by her ankle up the steps into Haven’s gates. He’s half a mind to tell her to go anyways. To tell her that she is important and has important input. But truthfully, he doesn’t know what role she plays. It seems that the Left and Right hand do all the planning then just send her out to do what she’s told. It would piss him off. 

“Fine, you can come with me. But when you get snow in your shoes don’t complain to me.”


	3. Chapter 3

Nehris does not pretend to understand shemlen politics. She does not understand their petty arguments and their strange ways and she especially does not understand why they are so conservative with touch. They sleep in separate cots. All of them. Well except some pairs here and there. But they sleep separately. It confuses her greatly. 

Aravels are often drafty. The chill usually creeps in between the cracks in the wood, and no matter how it is repaired or treated nights are cold. Sleeping alone is death. But beyond that, there’s something important to it. Nehris does not know how to explain to the humans that it is important to hear others’s heartbeats. There is something important to hearing the breathing around you, and knowing your family sleeps still and safe.

They put her in the cottage alone. 

Haven nights are bitterly cold. But the cheerful fire stoked by servants keeps the little cottage warm enough if she wears socks. Which she does. She doesn’t have to like it. Nehris just has to be warm. 

Warm isn’t enough.

She is lonely. Painfully so. It’s nearly impossible for her to sleep without the snores of her fellow hunters, or the midnight crying of the baby, or the soft sleepy mumbles and creaking of bodies rolling over to a new comfortable spot. The cottage is too quiet. The crackling of the fire does nothing to ease her anxiety. If anything, it keeps her awake with worry that the building will catch flame and she will not awaken again. Nehris gets pitiful amounts of sleep between the loneliness, the quiet, and the sheer unfamiliar throbbing ache of the Anchor.

She wants to go home. 

She cannot go home.

Nehris takes to wandering Haven, always within the walls, at night. She’s sure she must be quite a sight. Slight of build, hair messed up from rolling over and over and over trying to rest, hand glowing. Like a ghost. The frost crunches under her shoes, and the air is sharp in her lungs. She is hunter. She is not unfamiliar with late nights. And besides, she sees better than these humans in the dark. 

She likes to sit on the table that is Seggrit’s little trading alcove. Nehris likes to run her fingers over the chilled metal of shield and blade and remember her clan’s craftsman. It isn’t the same. None of it is. Nothing is crafted even remotely like they would. But it soothes some of the tightening ache in her chest if she closes her eyes and pretends. If she closes her eyes tight enough, and wants bad enough, sometimes she can hear the children laughing as they play Wolf and Halla, chasing enough other through camp boisterously. 

It helps her forget how lonely she is if only for a moment. 

These humans are so strange and foreign and her mouth aches for the cooking of her people. Her hands ache for the weapons of her people. Her feet ache for the worn smooth wood of the Aravel. Her heart stings. Her tears sting worse in the cold. 

It becomes a routine.

Heat the cottage. Wear the shemlen night clothes. Try to sleep. Roll. Roll. Roll. Fail to sleep. Put on shoes, trousers, and a heavier jacket. Wander. Circle Haven three times. Find herself sitting on that table touching the shields. Try not to cry. Fail. Cry until her teeth chatter and her face burns. Go back to the cottage. Sleep a few hours. Repeat. 

It is only a matter of time before the humans find out if they don’t already know.

Nehris knows this. She shudders to think what they might do. Would they medicate her? Put a guard on her door? She doesn’t know. What she does know is they think her some kind of holy. Humans do terrible things in the name of the holy. Nehris knows she is going to die here. They will find some excuse to martyr her. Or maybe they will execute her as a false prophet. In the long run, she has little time. Not sleeping may be a blessing. Maybe the Creators want her to spend her time thinking of family. 

It is not as comforting as it should be.

Adan is first to notice.

And why shouldn’t he be?

He is her Apothecary. Her healer. The man kept her alive long enough to close that first rift. He notices his patient is off first. He has the decency not to report it, but instead prescribes her a tincture. Herbs to calm the body and mind, he had said. Nehris knew a little of the healing arts. Not much. A few things really. All of it learned from when she was sent with the First or others to gather herbs for the Keeper. Adan is not lying from what she can smell. It is a simple tincture. Pure alcohol, honey, chamomile, lavender, something a bit more earthy she cannot place. It is the unknown that keeps her from taking it. 

Her sleeping does not improve, and so Adan is forced to tell the others.

They assign Solas to investigate, immediately believing it to be a result of the mark. 

They aren’t right. They aren’t wrong. It does keep her awake with its ache. But it isn’t the culprit. 

Solas cannot find any reason, magical or physical, why the Herald cannot sleep. Adan confirms that this is true. There is nothing physical or magical keeping her from rest. They conclude it is something else. She does not tell them what, and without that information, nothing can be done. Cassandra is angry for a few days. Mad that they cannot simply fix the elven girl. Mad that her Herald is restless. Mad that all of this is happening. But she isn’t angry with Nehris. Not that Nehris could tell you the difference. 

The first person to make an attempt to make Nehris feel safer in Haven is Leliana. 

She leaves a pair of Dalish gloves on the table in cottage as well as a very kind letter. Leliana had a friend once who loved gloves like these. She hopes the gift makes Nehris feel more at home. And it does, a little. But it doesn’t help. It doesn’t bring back her home. It does not make her trust these people. 

The second is Solas, who kindly places wards of protection around the cottage. He carefully crafts them, folding his magic into crisp intentions. It reminds her a little of the Keeper making them little talismans and trinkets to ward off fear and cold. It is a kind gesture, and she does sleep a little more soundly with his wards keeping the nightmares at bay. But it does not make Nehris feel safe.

The third is Cassandra. This shocks Nehris as much as anyone else. Cassandra brings her books. She apologizes profusely when she learns Nehris reads little trade. Then, in a way too gentle for her stature, Cassandra offers to teach Nehris to read. This comforts her greatly. If she can read the words in that war room she would be much more comfortable with their plans. She would feel safer. Nehris is quicker a study than expected, but it is still slow work.

Varric teaches her the names for human alcohol. Teaches her games. Spends time honing her language skills. He gives her the tools she needs to navigate humans, and dwarves, and she cherishes this. He had a Dalish friend once. She had needed guidance too. He offers it in a way that reminds her of the older hunters. Kind, teasing, friendly. He answers her cultural questions and gets down to the meat of why humans do things. He is honest. She is grateful. 

Bull polishes her combat skills. The girl hunts deer, not men. He teaches her to hold herself, to read the battlefield, where to strike and when. He forces her to hold her own. Nehris is bruised and battered, and usually a little bloodied, after these training sessions, but gains confidence in her step. And a hefty amount of muscle where it never formed on her. He makes her into the warrior this world needs, and she cannot repay him.

Sera keeps her arrows sharp. Teaches her to watch the servants. Listen to the whispers in the cracks between stones. The people will tell you more than their lords. She teaches Nehris to mix poisons with more potency, designed to undo men. Shows her where the cracks are in Haven’s walls for when she wants to slip out. And little by little, Nehris is sleeping better. She has an escape route now. 

Cullen teaches Nehris, not directly but more by observation, that bad men can look good, and good men can look bad. And with humans it is so hard to tell. Through watching him, Nehris learns how to stand to take the force of a magical blow. She learns how to hold the pain of her Anchor. This man holds his pain with such grace. She asks him how. He tells her faith. Cullen teaches her to go to her gods more. He teaches her that those who have suffered can hold more. She has to hold enough for everyone who whispers the name of the Maker’s Bride. He will help her with learning to do that. It is a practical kindness, one he does not need to show. 

Vivienne teaches Nehris book smarts. Instructs her on chantry history. This is how to sit like a lady, Nehris. Shows her which spoons to use at what point in a meal. Impresses upon her the importance of looking the part. If she wants respect, she must demand it in every facet of her being. If she wants to be more than her ears, she must demand it. Vivienne shows her how. She will be more than her ears. She will be their Prophet. At least in public. 

Josephine brings her plants for her cottage. Spends time with her. Shows her kindness and laughs with her and lets her tell stories of her home. Josephine remembers those stories in the gifts she brings. Soon, Nehris’s cottage resembles a greenhouse on the inside with drapings like that if an Aravel. Josephine gives her a home she recognizes when she did not have to. Nehris will remember this in the gifts she will give to Josephine.

Blackwall gives her peace. It is his gift she cherishes most. He takes her on walks. They pick blueberries together outside Haven, hunt together for rabbits, cook and sit in silence. He spends time with her not to teach her, but for her to teach him. He is a curious man. Always wants to know more about how she lived. Wants to help. He shows her how best to chop wood, and she shows him which trees have the sweetest sap. He shows her how he cooked when he was wandering for recruits. She shows him how the Dalish cook. There is a surprising amount of similarities. Blackwall reminds her that she is Dalish, and home is where she makes it. He teaches her to embrace what makes her unique. ‘You are here for a reason, chosen or not.’ She will do right by him.

One day, Nehris wakes up in Haven and the sun is shining, and the birds are singing, and she realizes she has slept the whole night.

She didn’t even feel lonely.


	4. Chapter 4

“Do you get hot under all that fur?”

Nehris asks Blackwall in Haven’s Tavern. She doesn’t really drink, so he isn’t sure why she’s here. But she is. He looks down in confusion. He is still wearing his quilted tunic and a pair of trousers. No furs. He looks around. Maybe the world was finally ending and Cullen had made an appearance in the tavern. He’s the only man Blackwall can think of who wears furs. His quick investigation comes up with nothing, and Nehris is giving him an expectant look. That confirms it. She was asking him. 

“Uh, what fur, my lady?” He very slowly asks. He isn’t sure he wants to know what she means.

“Nehris,” She corrects out of habit before plopping down on the edge of his table. Some of the liquid in his mug sloshes over the side as she does it. He sighs mentally, wasted alcohol is a tragedy. “I mean all that.” Her hands come up to her face, fingers making grabbing motions and eyes glimmering in the firelight.

Oh.

His beard. She’s asking about his beard. 

“If I have I’ve never noticed.” He tells her honestly.

Her face falls. Nehris plants her chin in her hand in thought for a moment. She does look quite lovely when she’s bewildered. Blackwall takes this time to sneak a sip of his drink in. Her eyes light up and settle on him.

“Does it get in the way of eating?” Nehris sounds far to excited asking this question. 

“I suppose it used to when I was younger and just barely growing it out. Not so much anymore.” He is beginning to be a little amused with her curiosity. It’s endearing in a way.

Nehris hums sagely. She looks every bit a scholar with how she is observing him. Perched in the edge of the table, chin resting in her palm and elbow on her knee. She’s like a statue of some kind. His curiosity gets the better of him after a few more swigs. 

“Why do you ask?”

She perks up fast, like a songbird at dawn. 

“I’ve never seen a beard like that. It is very long. It looks heavy. Is it heavy, Warden Blackwall?”

“Uh, no? No more noticeably heavy than your hair must be, lady.”

“Nehris.” She corrects out of habit. Then moves her fingers back to self consciously toy with her braid. 

He thought maybe Solas just didn’t grow hair much at all considering the man’s baldness and lack of facial hair. But the longer this goes, the more Blackwall is sure he is missing something. 

“Hm, I suppose my braid is rather heavy. But I do not usually notice.” Nehris concludes after placing the hair on one hand and sizing it up, removing it, then repeating. 

“Your people,”

“Elves.”

“Right. Elves. They don’t have beards do they?”

“Oh, not at all. It’s so strange. You have hair on your face, and that’s apparently normal. Most of the men have it. Even Cullen. He wouldn’t answer my questions, though. Varric and Bull have some too, though, so I suppose it’s not a human thing solely.”

Right, he thinks. Doesn’t say it. Instead he nods and pushes his now empty tankard aside. She tilts her head at him, looking very much like a pup, and smiles a dazzling smile. Blackwall suddenly feels very nervous.

“Have you ever braided it, Warden Blackwall.”

There it is.

“No.”

“May I braid it?”

“No.”

“Not even if I added flowers to make you extra lovely?”

“Absolutely not. Don’t you have, I don’t know, Herald things to do, my lady?”

“Nehris. And no, we are waiting on missives from Val Royeaux.”

“Of course you are.”


	5. Chapter 5

Thom finds her impressive.

No, impressive is a poor word. But he’s never been one for words. He’s been one for action, and her actions warrant respect. Awe.

Nehris slides across the charred ground, brow drawn and braid fluttering. He knows it’s going to bruise if it hasn’t already. Maybe she’ll have some cracks in her shin or ankle. The metal of her boots shriek in protest. Then, she is up, blades slashing hard and deep against the dragon’s hind leg. She does not cut deep enough, judging by the way her brows raise, because she is sprinting back fast and hard as the beast kicks out.

Thom, where he is standing, has his shield raised against the beast above Solas’s head. The mage is working to get Cassandra on her feet again, and Nehris had ordered him to do whatever it takes. Keep them safe, Blackwall.

She had demanded he stay there. 

He watches her face down the dragon as it turns to spit awful globs of fire at her. Nehris sprints out of the way of the flames. Her brow shines with sweat in the sun, and the metal of her armor reflects the orange. Her boots smoke. She slams one of her blades into its sheath, metal singing, and fishes out a flask from her pocket. Ah, the antivan fire grenade. Thom isn’t an expert on dragons, but he isn’t sure how well that will do against this beast. It commands flame already.

The glass shatters, the sound barely noticeable above the world crushing movements of the Fereldan Frostback. The beast shrieks a horrible sound. Nehris his the ground, covers her ears with the hilts of her blade and her empty hand. 

Cassandra is up.

He moves. 

Nehris is up now.

The cool magic of a well crafted barrier hugs him.

Nehris pulls her blade, roars something in elvhen, and rushes into the fire.

Maker, let her come out of this.

He and Cassandra move in on the side opposite to where Nehris has disappeared into the artificial fire. The dragon is making desperate, pained sounds now. They slash in unison at the delicate underbelly. Delicate is a nice term. The scales are stronger than steel. His arm aches. His lungs burn. Cassandra gasps out prayers and keeps her footing and they do not let this monster turn on them. Instead, they turn it towards Nehris, who has emerged from the flames. Some of the cloth of her armor has burnt up, but she is relatively unharmed. Save the bruising and cuts and blood and probably broken fingers. Maybe a few ribs. He isn’t an expert.

Thom sees the fear in the dragon’s eyes when she tries to jump, and her hind leg gives out with a sickening crunch. The Frostback collapses and the ground bucks beneath his feet. She lets out high panicked keens as she tries to move the leg Nehris has expertly ruined.

He almost pities the poor thing. 

Nehris is marching towards the head of the dragon. 

The end that spits fire with teeth the length of a grown man’s leg. 

Maker, he’s going to be sick. 

The beast lunges her great head, jaw snapping with an ear rending click. Nehris rolls to the side, and her blades are in the dragon’s throat past the hilt. The dragon emits a gurgling wail as Nehris rips a vertical gash down the long neck of the dragon, blood pours out in gallons, soaking her and filling her boots. It steams where it hits the super-heated ground. She pulls the blades out as the dragon shakes with death and slowly limps around to the front of the Frostback’s head. Leaning on the bucking beast the whole time. 

If anyone else had told Thom what happened next, he would have said bullshit.

But he was there.

Nehris sheathed her blades, reached her trembling hands out, and pet the damn dragon. Like a horse. Long soothing strokes down the snout of the creature, whispering soothing nothings as it bled out. She’s cradling the damn thing like it’s a wounded child. They watch as the Herald of Andraste comforts a dying dragon, and no one knows what to say. But Nehris is crying too. 

“I’m sorry,” She tells the lizard that had been previously trying to roast them, “Falon’din enasal enaste, Mythal’len.”

Thom doesn’t speak elvhen, but it is a sad solemn moment. Once the dragon’s eyes go glassy with death, the moment is over, and Nehris limps over to Solas for medical attention, eyes hard and jaw set with pain. She claps a hand on his breastplate as she limps by him, “Good job, Blackwall.” He can’t help how his shield hand cradles the spot she had touched once she passes.

Nehris Lavellan is impressive, he thinks, but she is so much more than that.

He wants to know what lies beneath.


	6. Chapter 6

On the way back from the Mire, Nehris fell ill.

It should have surprised no one. The woman is the size of a small cat and had been parading around in cold, plague infested waters for days. Even Bull was sniffling a little hard. It didn’t hit anyone as hard as it hit her, though. Which, truly, should not have surprised anyone. But it did. Thom supposes he thought her invincible after the dragon thing. A silly thought. 

Nehris fell ill and couldn’t walk. 

They had to send for a caravan from Haven to get her back. 

So here they were, stuck camping out in the chill of the Frostbacks with a very sick elf. 

Solas assured them that as long as the fever stayed low she would be fine. That was before she kicked him out of the tents and snarled at him to not touch her. With a few elven expletives, they’re sure. They had been drawing straws on who had to check her fever. Finally, it was his turn. Bull had gotten the short end twice before Thom even had to check once. 

He pries himself away from the pitiful fire they had managed to scrape together and ventures into the cave they had all set their tents up in. Less wind to rip the warmth away in here. 

“Lady Herald, uh, I’m here to check on you.” Thom announces his presence just outside the tent. He hears the garbled groan in response and rustling. Worries when she doesn’t correct him on her name. She always corrects him. 

Bull had said she’s barely conscious, but decent enough. Solas hadn’t elaborated when Thom had asked if she was decent. He hopes Bull isn’t messing around with him, and steps into the tent.

Shit, she’s red. Really red. Red lyrium red. Her hair is soaked with sweat, lips pale and cracked miserably, eyelids hot red. Her breathing is shallow in and out of her mouth. She looks so small. They have bundled her in two bedrolls and a whole host of blankets. She’s swimming in furs. Poor thing. The tent reeks of illness, he notes.

“Are you feeling better?” He asks. She makes the most miserable squeak he thinks he’s ever heard. Something twinges in his chest. He’ll think on that later. He has a job. 

“I’m going to check your fever now, my lady. Please, lie still.” He doesn’t think she could wriggle her way out of her blanket prison if she tried, but the sentiment is there. Nehris grumbles in protest. Barely words. “‘M ‘Kay.” Even this sick she manages to argue. He chuckles, steps towards her and settles on his heels. “I’m sure you are, lady.” He tells her as he peels his glove off and sets his hand on her forehead.

Maker, she’s hot. 

Really hot.

“How bad?” She manages. Her voice drags like metal on stone. But at least the coughing has stopped in the past few hours. 

“Not bad at all. You’re doing a lot better. Water?” She grunts affirmative. He would feel bad about the lie, except she certainly knows he’s lying. She’s bad. Bad enough he’s of a mind to drag Solas in here by his ears to cool her down with some magic. He reaches for the little wooden cup he had carved for her, fills it with water from his flask.

“I’m going to help you up now.” Thom tells her. He snakes his arm under her, pulls her semi upright, and places the cup to her dry lips with the other hand. She’s very warm. Too warm. Nehris manages a few sips before breaking into a cough. He lets her lean against him for strength. 

“Are you made of iron?”

She whispers before taking a few more sips. Fever question. Makes no sense. Poor thing. He nurses the water into her until the cup is empty. He settles her back down careful to arrange her so her head is supported by something relatively soft. She’s miserable enough. Doesn’t need to lay on rocks. 

“I’m going to send for Solas.” He tells her. She half opens one eye and fixes it on him. It closes again nearly immediately with exhaustion. “No Solas. You. Stay.”

“You need proper medical care.” He tries to instill the importance of it with his tone. 

“Blackwall, Gordon, stay.” The name he stole is heavy on her swollen tongue, her accent does not do it justice. But the intention. The use of a first name. Curse the blighted Mire. Curse her for asking him by name. Why couldn’t she want the damn elf in here? Why couldn’t she want someone with the mind to keep her alive in here? He sighs. 

“Fine. But if you get worse I’m getting Solas.”

The response he gets is the tiniest snore he’s ever heard in all his years.


	7. Chapter 7

Nehris is not the same after Redcliffe.

How could she be?

She is quieter, smaller, after all that. 

Thom had watched her disappear for a moment. She had been bright, ready, teeth sharp and eyes sharper ready to undo this magister. Then the next moment she had stumbled back into place but was not the same woman. Her eyes were deeper. Haunted. Nehris had looked small and frightened and her shoulders trembled when the King ordered them out. 

He had never seen her tremble before a human before. Sure, she had jumped occasionally when someone raised their voice. But to tremble with tears in her eyes. It shocked him. It shocked all of them. 

She is not the same after the mages, and he doesn’t know what to do. 

Nehris cried in her tent on the journey back to Haven.

They all heard it. They all did her the courtesy of pretending they didn’t. She sobbed, tried not to wail. The canvas is so thin the entire camp surely did not sleep with the sound. She is not the huntress they have come to rely on for the entirety of the journey. Nehris falls behind. She slumps and slouches and barely eats. That Tevinter, Dorian, doesn’t comfort her but doesn’t encourage anyone to get in her space either. He has the same look in his eyes. He just holds it better. 

Where does a girl that small hold her grief when it won’t fit?

How do you sleep again when the people you are learning to care about perish before you? 

Thom does not know what to do. It isn’t his place, really. But people are relying on her. She is so much more than Nehris to the world, and he does not know how to tell her this without being cruel. He does not know how to tell her this without ripping away her ability to mourn in peace.

Besides, he may have been there but he doesn’t know. Not really. 

So, he joins Dorian in being a barrier. If anyone has word for her, they go through him first. He will decide who gets to bother her. He turns away plenty of Inquisition messengers. If the Commander disapproves of Nehris’s choice at Redcliffe he can damn well wait to tell her in person. No need to send missive after missive of complaint. Thom burns the letters. The Commander will wait. He has decided. 

Thom suspects Nehris knows he keeps watch outside her tent. He suspects she can hear him hiss threats to leave her be. If it bothers her, she doesn’t say anything. 

When did he start to care about this elf as a person? 

Thom hasn’t been a good man. Not in the slightest. He couldn’t care less what became of little frightened girls back when he, back then. He doesn’t really know what to do with this feeling. This resolute desire to protect. It reminds him of his youth. Before he was a bad man, Thom was an okay boy. He was the type of boy who pulled the pigtails of the girls who said unkind things to his sister. Sure, he got in trouble for it, but he didn’t much care. No one talked to Linny like that. He wouldn’t say he was a good brother. Just the kind that bloodied the noses of those who looked at her funny. Strange, he hasn’t felt this way about anyone since Linny. Not until Nehris.

Nehris is not Linny.

He certainly does not feel the same way about her as he did his sister. That much is obvious.

So why has he moved his bedroll outside her tent like a mabari watching its master? 

Maker, something in her eyes when she came back from that awful future. The way her voice had ground and cracked and spilled. He bit the inside of his lip so hard he tasted blood. The things he had wanted to do to that magister. The pain he had wanted to inflict. Thom is not a good man. He knows that. He was ready to embrace that. It took everything, everything, not to.

Thom was willing to break the world for putting that look in her eyes.

He had tightened his fists so hard in his gauntlets his knuckle bruised.

When they get back to Haven, he waits. Watches. Hopes that his presence is threat enough to keep the worst of their criticism at bay. He’s never sure if it’s enough. What he does know, is she did her best. She did what she thought was just and right. Whether anyone approves is irrelevant. They sent her, and she did her damn job. They got the mages. 

Nehris has suffered enough.

They don’t need to make her feel worse.


	8. Chapter 8

Thom often volunteers his time and what assistance he can offer around Haven’s smithy. Sure, you can fight a battle with rusted kitchen knives. You aren’t likely to come out with all your fingers, or at all, but you can. He isn’t about to let this army of faithful run around in their day clothes with tree branches for weapons. These men need proper outfitting.

Thom isn’t a smith. He does not claim to be. But he can chop wood, and run materials, and fetch water. He can do things to help. Anyone can help, really. He just wants to. 

He is sorting through old weapons one day. The ‘to be recycled’ pile. Things the Inquisition has found or bought for a few coppers. Usually, the pile consists of rusted bent swords and daggers, shields that have been violently worn through or cracked, and broken bows. All waiting to be repurposed or repaired just enough to be considered decent again.

Today he finds a bow.

Not just any bow.

It’s of Dalish make. 

He pulls the bow from the pile, checks his coinpurse, and harasses Harrit. Can it be repaired? Can you fix the break? Can you recover this specific weapon? It isn’t cheap, but Harrit can make it work. The bow will lose some of the beautiful carvings, but it can be fixed. It’s an easy fix. The bow is broken in half down the middle. It likely took the force of a great sword or hammer. Harrit can forge a new grip and attach it directly in the middle. The bow won’t be the best. It will have more bend than it should. He can reinforce this by wrapping metal from tip to tip around the wood. Thom tells him to do it. It won’t be to Dalish standards, but the damn thing will shoot with decent accuracy. 

Two weeks later Thom is presented with a repaired Dalish bow. Some of the carving has indeed been ruined, but the twining metal has been shaped to look like tree branches and vines. It’s shoddy work. Definitely not something a master made. But it makes Thom smile all the same. To him, it’s a kind of beautiful.

He rushes up the stairs into Haven, breath catching in his lungs, bow gripped tight. 

It’s perfect.

The wood practically sings when he knocks in the door to her cottage. The world is brighter. The sun is bouncing off the stones of the walkways. He feels good about this. Better than good. 

“Come in!”

The shout is muffled by the wood, but is undeniably Nehris. He lets himself into the cottage.

Thom has never seen the Herald’s living space. It’s lovely. The walls are padded with plush tapestries depicting Dalish gods and stories. Above her bed, like a canopy, one of those red wagon sails is draped. Plants litter every surface imaginable with lush green leaves. It’s a wonderful contrast to the red and gold of the tapestries. The only location safe from dangling crystals and fabric and blossoms is her desk. Nehris’s desk is surprisingly clear and organized. Next to it is a bookshelf filled with novels of varying difficulty. It smells of spices, he notes, eyes finding the culprit on her desk. A hot steaming mug of something his nose deems delicious. 

Nehris is perched in a chair tongue peeking out of her mouth and brow furrowed with concentration. In her hands is one such book. He recognizes it as a collection of bedtime stories for noble children. Her fingers trace the writing very slowly. 

She is lovely. 

Her hair is down from it’s normal tight braid, cascading down her back and over her shoulders. A tapestry of deep oaky brown. She is in a light shirt and trousers. Ill fitting and loose, he notes. Probably designed for a human woman. Her toes peek out from under her thigh, bare foot. After Nehris is satisfied with whatever she was reading she tucks a chain into the book and very carefully closes it. 

She twists just enough to catch him in her sights. A soft smile graces her face.

“Blackwall, to what to I owe the pleasure?”

Then she must notice the bow in his hands because her own hand quickly comes up to cover a quiet gasp. Nehris is out of the chair very quickly and crosses the room to him in three long strides. 

“Where did you get this?” She asks, fingers reaching out to trace some of the wood. 

He swallows back the grin threatening to consume his mouth. 

“It was in the damaged pile. I had Harrit repair it.”

“It’s beautiful.” Nehris breathes, stroking the wood almost religiously. Maker, the way her eyes are sparkling. There’s nothing a hunter loves more than a beautiful weapon, he thinks with amusement. “I did not know you were interested in archery, Blackwall.” She says, looking up at him through her lashes. 

His chest burns with the kick of his heart. Thom hopes his hands aren’t trembling. He feels like he’s shaking under the force of his heartbeat.

“I’m not.”

Nehris cocks her head to the side like she always does when she doesn’t understand. It’s a soft tilt, noticeable as a habit only if you knew her well. He is surprised to say he knows her well enough. Her tongue darts out to moisten her lips, then she slowly asks.

“Why do you have such a bow then?”

He’s giddy with excitement. Get a hold of yourself, Thom. Behave. She’s divinely chosen. And you are a criminal. It is a nice thing for a friend. Nothing more. He takes a breath, steadies himself. 

“For you.”

Thom prides himself on how calm he sounds. How simple. How factual. 

Nehris glows. 

Literally.

Maker, his heart hurts it’s beating so fast.

Her hand glimmers awakening at its mistress’s emotional response. A grin consumes her lips, and her eyes crinkle around the edges. Pretty pink dusts the apples of her cheeks. She all but blooms. If he could make her happy like this every day, he would die a good man.

“You didn’t have to.” 

Is all she says before she takes the bow fully in her grip. Her fingers slide up and down the wood, hand tests the grip. He’s never seen her look so delighted before. Not even when she tried Leliana’s rose cakes. A happy chirp sounds from her throat when her hand fits around the grip perfectly. 

“Gordon,” Nehris breathes, “this is the nicest gift anyone has ever given to me. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

Her fingers stroke along the wood idly as she says it. 

“I didn’t do it to be repaid. It’s a gift, my lady. Use it in good health.”

“Nehris.” She corrects him as she turns to set the bow down on her bed. He stifles his laugh and prides himself on how successful he is at passing it off as a little cough. Then, she turns her gaze sharply on him. Hands smoothing her blankets under the bow.

“You’ve begun something you will not be able to finish, Gordon. Be careful giving women gifts like this, they might have to give you something back.”

Oh Maker. Is she? She isn’t. She couldn’t be.

“That shield of yours has been looking shabby lately, hasn’t it?” Eyes sparkling mischievously. 

Oh. 

Oh that’s good, that’s better.

That makes sense.

He laughs, she grins. A decent shield in return, that’s fine by him. He wasn’t expecting anything. He’ll take a decent shield, though.


	9. Chapter 9

About two hours ago Vivienne, Josephine and Leliana had corralled and dragged Nehris away from the smithy up to the Chantry. The doors had closed with a kind of finality reserved for caskets.

Then the sounds began.

Maker, the sounds.

Thom doesn’t think he’ll ever sleep again. 

Nehris shrieked like a dying dragon. There was crashing and screaming and threats. In the midst of the chaos Cassandra had entered the Chantry.

No one has come out. 

After about an hour and a half it had gone quiet. Thom privately wonders if they’re all dead in there, the women. After all, what could all that sound be? It’s a Chantry, not a prison. They have books not instruments of torture. But the sounds had chilled the blood of all the passer-by.

After the two hours, Nehris had emerged from the chantry. In nice shoes. And well fitting trousers. With washed hair. And a loosely laced corset. But the thing that really caught Thom’s attention was her nails. Maker, they had lacquered her nails. She looked every bit the lady. Nice nails, nice clothes, nice shoes. Her eyes had been rimmed with kohl and her cheeks lightly rouged. And her hair. They had intricately braided and bunned her hair and put jeweled clasps in place to hold it.

She looked miserable.

He couldn’t help but laugh. 

Nehris had been drowned in perfumes and scented soaps and smelled like a florists shop from across Haven. And the poor woman looked like a cat that had been half drowned. She frowned and fussed, flicking her fingers and poking at the lacquer. He caught her on more than one occasion trying to undo the evil knots Leliana had used to secure her corset and ankle boots. Oh, she looked furious. It made Thom grin. 

What a funny thing to be mad about.

Though, he isn’t sure what was so wrong with her before.

Nehris was lovely in her Dalish leathers with her worn gloves and boots and long braid. She hadn’t smelled offensively. He had never noticed a smell on her at all. She was plenty lovely to look at without makeup. The jewelry and finery of a lady just didn’t suit her. 

She had fled the Chantry straight to him and begged him to undo her corset. Obviously, he had to say no. What kind of man undresses a lady in public? Especially a lady like her. He was not going to. Though in a different circumstance he isn’t sure if he would be able to say no to such a request. The thought made his thighs ache. She had been beside herself. Poor thing. If anything made her miserable, it was her nails. They had been trimmed and oiled and lacquered like a noble lady’s and she looked so heartbroken as she ran her fingers over them. He was going to have to talk to Lady Josephine about this. Nehris is not a noble and their allies cannot expect her to be. She is beyond decent enough without all the trappings.

She is beyond beautiful enough already.

So, Thom helps her untie the ankle boots they’ve stuffed her into, and the look on her face makes his heart stop. She’s so grateful. Then in the next moment, Nehris is taking off for her cottage to find a pair that are comfortable, he’s sure. 

Poor thing. They’re all trying to make her into what they want. When will they ask her what she wants?

He’d give her anything she wants if she told him to.

Shouldn’t they all feel the same about their Herald?


	10. Chapter 10

“Show me your hands.”

Nehris demands it of him one night while they’re camped out in the Exalted Plains. Thom does not know how to reply so he holds out his hands. She frowns. The firelight casts odd shadows across her features and the light dances around her tattoos in a bewitching way. He does not know why he doesn’t hesitate. Thom suspects she could ask him to put his dagger through his thigh and he would just do it. No questions asked. Anything she desired. 

Her hands run down the worn leather of his gloves, featherlight. Nehris hums as she reaches towards his wrist, hooks her fingers under his gloves, and begins wiggling the leather off. 

“I can do that, my Lady.”

She gives him a sharp look. He can hear echoes of the times she’s corrected him on her name sweep through his ears. Nehris is somehow more here in this place. He isn’t sure why. But she’s been stronger, more confident, sharper. She removes his gloves and sets them across her thigh. Thom tries very hard not to think of how the outline of them is the same shape of his hands. He tries very hard not to notice how easy it would be to hold her there, to see how much of her he could envelope in his grip. He fails to not think about this. 

His gloves are off, and Nehris takes his hands in her own and traces her fingers along the scars and callouses. Her cold fingertips brush against where he keeps his nails too short. He is starkly warm in comparison, and his palms are damp with nervousness, and she does not seem to care. She spends extra time prodding at callouses, drags the pad of her thumb over the roughened skin expertly. Like she’s familiar with it.

Like she’s familiar with where he formed.

It’s all strangely intimate.

Thom is grateful for the firelight. It conceals what must be a very bright flush dusting his cheeks and nose. Nehris turns his hands over, traces the outline of bone and presses against knuckle. She looks very thoughtful. Thom wants to ask what this is all about, but it dies in his throat. She looks different. Puzzled. She stops her investigation, settling instead for simply holding his hands within her own. Thom is no schoolboy, no child, but his heart still jumps into his throat. Strange that. Nehris turns to look at the fire. Sits for a good few minutes just holding him until he clears his throat. She doesn’t even jump. Keeps watching the orange flames lick and dance and grow. 

“You’ve good hands.” She finally says very quietly, and her fingers tighten for just a moment in a soft squeeze. 

“Okay?” 

“Honest hands for a mysterious man.” She murmurs. He starts. Could she know? Did they figure him out? “You’ve worked for every breath you’ve had, haven’t you?” Nehris asks. 

“As much as any man I suppose.”

She hums low and deep in response. Reminds him of the large shadows in the ocean when he has crossed the seas. 

“I’d go as far as to say your hands are beautiful, Blackwall.” And she releases one hand, but twines her fingers between his on the other. He isn’t sure how much of it she’s aware she’s doing. But to call his hands beautiful is a bold lie. His nails are cracked, hands leathery from work and calloused and scarred. They’re rough. The hands of a warrior. Of a man who lived in the woods. Who is not unfamiliar with cold. Nothing like the fine oiled hands of hers. Nothing like the soft fingertips, occasional callous from wielding a bow or blade softened by salves provided by Vivienne. Nothing like the smooth flat nails of hers. 

Thom doesn’t want to say a word. 

If he’s being honest with himself, and he is, he’s worried that she will notice their hands twined together and let go. He doesn’t want her to draw away. Not when she is warm and soft and kind and says such odd things. How many women have called any part of him beautiful? The answer is not many. And when Nehris says it he’s foolish enough to believe it. Nehris doesn’t waste words on people. Especially people who aren’t her people. 

And he doesn’t mean elves.

He means the people she has made into her new clan.

He’s honored to be one of them.

“What will you do? When this is all over?” Nehris asks him as her thumb rubs soft circles against the side of his hand. He feels his palm sweat and hazards a glance down at their joined hands. If she cares, she does not show it.

“I haven’t thought about it. I suppose I’ll have to go back to the Wardens.” He’s got to keep this up. She can’t know what he’s done. She’d never call him any kind of beautiful again if she knew what these hands have done.

Nehris sighs.

“For a time I thought to return to my people if I lived.” She confesses. The thought of her death unsettles him deeply. “But I suspect I am not truly one of them anymore. Not with what I’ve done and seen. Maybe I’ll go with you. Be a Grey Warden.”

His breath catches in his throat. She wants to go with him. Him. Everything in him wants to latch onto that. He wants to seize that with everything he has and never let go. Wants to tell her to run off with him, then. Fuck the Breach, fuck the magister, they could just disappear together. Then Nehris barks out a very sad very bitter laugh, and the moment has passed. He feels very foolish thinking such things. They are close friends, nothing more. He knows this. He saw her with the other elves. She was so touchy. This means nothing other than she trusts him.

“Ah, but I’m the Herald of Andraste. There is nowhere I can go where this world will not try to own me. I’m a permanent bargaining chip. And Creators know what this mark will do to me in the end. It is a child’s fantasy to think I could go with you. They’d never let me out the door.”

“Then I guess I’d have to steal you.” He tells her with a shrug. Nehris snaps her gaze over to him and tilts her head just so. He wonders what goes on in that pretty head of hers when she looks at him like that. When she looks at him so intensely. He speaks up. “That would make you my bargaining chip right?” He jests. She smiles, her fingers squeezing his own. Electricity runs up and down his spine. He feels very warm and floaty and foolish.

“That it would. Ah, but enough talk of the future. We should rest. The undead aren’t going to kill themselves tomorrow.”

And so she untwines her hand from his and everything in him cries out to follow her touch, then Nehris departs for her tent.


	11. Chapter 11

Nehris is a kisser. It might be a Dalish thing or it might be a her thing, truly they don’t know, but she’s a kisser. She’s a kiss your cheek in the morning, kiss your wrist or bruises when she bandages you, kiss her blade after she sharpens them type of girl. It’s odd. Thom has seen such kissing of cheeks only as a greeting in Orlais never as a ‘Good Morning Bull what’s for breakfast?’ type thing. But somehow, as with all the odd things she does, it just seems normal. 

That’s just Nehris.

She’s just so open with her love. 

Lately, he supposes at least.

He still recalls when he first met her. Nehris had been wide eyed like a caged animal, and sharp with her words, and she had trusted him first. It had felt so good when he realized that she spent all that time around him not because he frightened her, but because he made her feel safe. But the others. She was quick to run and hide. So skittish. So closed off. But when she was near him she was safe. Safe to sunbathe, or relax, or chase nugs, or climb trees, or simply watch and learn how humans behaved. He made her safe then. 

Thom still makes Nehris feel safe now.

He knows this in the way she sits by him in camp. The way her fingers rest on his wrist and her ankle bumps against his legs. She’s a kisser to everyone else in this little group she has deemed her clan, but not to him. What they have, he supposes, is different. Nehris is comfortable enough to lean on him when she is weary. She lets him watch over her when she is injured. When food is scarce, it is only his plate that she will take from. And only he is trusted to redress and bandage her wounds. 

She does not give him little kisses on the cheek, hand, shoulder.

Not like the others.

Truly, Thom does not understand this. Doesn’t care to. She can come to him until the sun stops rising, and even then he would still seek her out. He has no illusions. He is older than her, perhaps twenty years her senior. Nehris is a young beautiful thing, and he is old and grizzled and painfully human. He is a protector. A guardian. Nothing more. 

It does not stop him from burning with jealousy when she kisses Bull on the cheek or puts little braids in Sera’s hair or shares fresh ripe berries with Cole.

He had her first, he thinks bitterly, but maybe not best. 

Nehris grows into these people she surrounds herself with. She grows to love Dorian, who put her through the most frightening experience of her life. She grows to admire Cassandra and looks beyond the woman’s faith to see who she is underneath. Nehris sees the best in these people and he feels his stomach churn. 

What must she see in him to bring her so close? 

Thom has no illusions about the kind of man he is, has been, hopes to be. But he is rotted from the inside out and doesn’t know why she looks at him like he’s glowing. How does she look at him with such awe?

The first time Nehris kisses him is after a particularly rough bought with some of the red templars. He had taken a pommel to the side of his head. It was a foolish thing. He’d seen the knight moving towards her, and stepped without thinking. His shield arm had been dislocated and was hanging limply, and still, he put himself between the knight and her.

She had been furious. 

Even with a head injury blurring his memory he remembered her shouting, tears hot and angry on her cheeks. She’d be outraged that he would dare put his life in danger. It’s one thing if he’s prepared. It’s another to martyr himself to save her what would have only been a broken arm at most. She had been angry, and gave him a potion and some alcohol for the pain. 

And she had kissed the goose egg on the side of his head so gently he saw stars.

Or maybe it was that any slight pressure to it made the world swim.

Thom prefers the first option. 

“I will not lose you to foolishness.” She had told him. Something in the way she said it made his chest twist. There was demand in it. An order. ‘You will never do that again’ was unspoken, but they both knew it was there. Thom wishes every day that she told him that before Haven. That he had put himself between her and that creature. That thing haunts her, he knows it. The scent of the rotting dragon stays with her. He sees the way she goes pale around any undead ever since. 

If he had been half the man he wants to be he would have stayed when the monster came.

It is his greatest regret.


	12. Chapter 12

The first time Thom kisses Nehris is two weeks after they find Skyhold.

He doesn’t mean to. Not really. But he thought he had lost her, and once she came stumbling back no one let him see her. He would be a worse liar if he said it didn’t bother him. It did. She had spent a lot of time resting. When she wasn’t resting, she was leading her people. Cleaning out old cobwebs and dragging rotted wood to be burnt. He hadn’t seen her in ages and it bothered him. 

Back in Haven they had a kind of routine. When she was home, she would wake up, eat breakfast, and spend all day down at the Smithy near him. Sometimes with him. Always in his sight. He didn’t realize how he had come to depend on seeing her. Thom hadn’t realized how he had come to cherish being around her.

He doesn’t mean to kiss her. 

She comes to see him down by the stables where he has been helping tend to the animals. It’s a long walk for a recovering woman to make. She had cracked a few ribs in the encounter with that thing and broke her left hand. Nehris makes that long walk in the crisp mountain air to find him, to check on him. And she was worried about him, of all things. Nehris didn’t care about her injuries. She didn’t care about her recovery.

Nehris wanted to check on him.

Thom had felt the world fall out from under his feet when he learned that.

“I’m fine, Nehris.” He had told her. And something about saying her name had made her step closer to him, and tilt her head just so, and he is ashamed to say he took the opportunity he saw. She was warm, and even though her lips were chapped, she was soft. Her hand had found the back of his head, nails pressing against his scalp. She had even returned the kiss. 

She didn’t pull away like he half expected her to.

That was a good thing, he thought.

He was wrong. 

He did not see her for a month after that. Not for lack of trying. He sought her out many times, and only found empty rooms. Nehris was actively avoiding him. And why not? He was not a good man. He did not deserve things like this. And Nehris, the Inquisitor, The Herald of Andraste, couldn’t afford the distraction. He shouldn’t have pushed. He was older, and human, and she had told him there was a man back home she had her eye on. He knew better. He shouldn’t have pushed her.

Another remnant of the monster he used to be slipping out in a moment of weakness. 

When he does see Nehris again she is herself. She is still forthcoming with her trust, her touch, hands on his arm and shoulder as easy as before. She smiles as freely as before. Laughs even. But she doesn’t talk about it. They don’t talk about what happened in the barn. But she still pitches her tent near his when they travel, and shares food off her plate with him, and lets him carry her when her body gives out after a rough rift. 

Thom wants to know what changed. Because it certainly feels like nothing has changed, except she doesn’t talk about that hunter back home anymore. Instead, she shoots him smiles across camp and calls his hands beautiful and ties bracelets around his wrists. He knows something has changed, but cannot find what. She helps tie his hair back on windy days to keep it from tangling, and when his mood is light, she even sneaks a braid or two in. Nehris sneaks him treats at Skyhold, and takes him out riding, and asks his input on her more series duties. She gives him more than just her time now, and he doesn’t understand what he has done to deserve it.

The second time he kisses Nehris is after they come across that Dalish camp in the Plains. He knows why he did it this time. He had seen the way she blended into those people so easily. Watched the way they had greeted her with hugs and laughter and kisses on her forehead and cheek. Thom had seen how open she was with strangers, and with their merry band of men, and understood.

Something was different with how she treated him. 

This time, he asks permission. It is quiet and late and they are sitting at the edge of camp telling each other stories about the stars. Her people call all the shapes different things than he was taught. They do this every time they go somewhere new. It’s a comforting ritual. Tales of heroes and gods and kings and queens all immortalized in the twinkle of the night sky. Thom has always enjoyed listening to her talk, and this is his favorite thing they do together. So, with her leaning against his side for warmth, finger pointed towards the heavens, he asks permission.

Nehris had giggled, the sound bubbling out of her mouth like a brook.

“Gordon, you never have to ask.” She had told him, eyes twinkling in the din, and his chest had gone tight. Something in hungry in him had liked that reply far too much and had come awake to it.

The second time he kisses Nehris is very different. There is more intention behind it. More hunger. She is chill with nighttime, and he is much larger and warmer, and she kisses back with the force of a dragon. It takes him by surprise. Because one moment he’s sharing what he thinks is an awkward chaste kiss to test the waters, and the next he has an elf in his lap with her hands cradling his head and her tongue in his mouth. Andraste preserve him, she is so small, but right now she is the whole world. Nehris weighs next to nothing, but the passion she carries is enough to set the sky ablaze. He is surprised to find himself consumed by her. Nehris is in charge of this, and Thom has never been the party not in control. His whole life he’s taken the initiative. It’s, odd, and wonderful in a way that makes his thighs tingle, to not be in charge. He suspects that this moment will consume far too much of his time in nights to come.

Just as quickly as Nehris has begun, she pulls away, settles herself comfortably on him, and points back up to the sky to continue her story. Thom’s arm wraps around her middle and he steadies her on his lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like they’d been doing it for years. And there she is, star-kissed and beautiful, leaning back into his chest like it’s nothing. His mouth still tastes of her. And Maker, he doesn’t know what to do with this feeling consuming him. He doesn’t know where to put this electric hunger. He’s only a man, how is he supposed to hold something divine on his lap and know what to do? If Nehris has any of the same worries, she doesn’t show them. Instead, she leans back after she finishes her story and tucks a hot kiss underneath his jaw where his beard thins just a little. Thom’s whole body burns in response.

This woman is going to be the end of him, he just knows it.

He doesn’t dare ask what is going on. He has a pretty good idea of what this is, and he’ll double check that theory with Bull later. For now, Thom is content to let her run him through stories with the occasional kiss planted on his temple or knuckles. He’s content to let Nehris ruin him. Even if this is strictly physical. Right now, Thom doesn’t care. Even men in the gallows get a last meal, and he’s content to consider her his last something. He’s content to disillusion himself into believing he deserves this. 

Thom kisses Nehris, and it is nothing like the way she kisses the others in her little homemade family.

He kisses her and has a feeling he has unleashed something he won’t be able to keep up with.


	13. Chapter 13

Nehris wakes up in a tent in the Hinterlands and instantly knows what has happened. 

Outside, she hears Solas and Cassandra arguing. Doesn’t care to tune in to what they’re at odds about specifically.

Her arm burns. The pain is like the splitting of bone, and the world spins. This thing is killing her. This Mark. Closing the damn rifts is killing her. Every time she reaches through to the Beyond and wills it to stay behind the Veil, the Beyond rips back. They want her to stitch the world shut. They want her to repair the heavens. And she is doing it, one hole at a time.

But it is killing her.

Nehris does not know how much more she has. She has given these people everything, and they still ask for more. She has given them her name, her smile, her trust, and she is giving them her life. But it is not enough. 

“You’re awake.” Is the low timbre of the one she trusts most from the corner of the tent. 

“Regrettably.” She hisses back through clenched teeth. 

This one will never know how much he means to her. The honest one. The kind one. The only one who isn’t asking her to die. He’s asking her to be hope, not to die. She enjoys Blackwall’s company. He treats her like a person. When it’s just him, she’s Nehris. To everyone else she is the Herald of Andraste. A commodity. A war asset. Their only chance at salvation. 

“How’s your pain?” He asks, and mythal’enaste the concern in his voice makes her head sing. Nehris manages a grunt in response. She knows she must be frightful to look at. Her mouth tastes of iron, and there is blood crusted in her nostrils. It was a bad one. And the pain. Creators the pain. She’s not sure how she manages to fit so much agony in her body. This is all some cruel jest. She wants it to be a nasty dream, and one day she’s going to hit her head hard enough closing one of the damn rifts, and it will jolt her from this horrific nightmare.

Blackwall grunts in response and passes a flask her way. She accepts it with her right hand, fumbles with the stopper, and is glad for the burn of whatever vile liquid is in it. All that matters is the liquor is strong and she gets a lot of it. Solas and Cassandra are still shouting at each other. Nehris passes the nearly empty flask back to Blackwall and throws her good arm over her eyes with a groan. 

“You gave us quite the scare.”

“I imagine I’ll give you quite a few more before this is all over.”

She surprises herself with how organized and coherent her response is. Between the alcohol and her pain, she didn’t think she had it in her to be logical. She can feel his scowl from where she is hiding under the comforting weight of her arm. 

“Don’t make that face, Blackwall. I am dying. This is a fact. Closing rifts accelerates the speed at which I am dying. This is another fact. I knew this, and closed the rift anyway, as is my duty. You didn’t think that closing holes between worlds was a painless costless process, did you?”

Quiet for a moment. A sigh.

“I don’t know what I thought, my lady.”

She growls softly in response. “Nehris.” She corrects him. He huffs. Then, with a bitter smile, “At least I will die with good company.” Blackwall’s fist tightens, she can hear the leather of his gloves creak. “You’ve already accepted that you’re going to die. You’re just waiting for it.” He spits. Nehris hazards a shrug, regrets it instantly when agony shoots through her left side. “As opposed to what? Getting my hopes up? Dreaming that I will go home and mother children with sweet Fenlin and live into my old age and die among my people old and wizened and my grandchildren will sing for me? It is a lovely dream, Blackwall. But I do not get to have that dream. That much has been decided for me.”

He shifts his weight. Nehris sighs.

“I’d rather accept that I will die here than to lie to myself. I’d love to survive this, Blackwall. But I won’t. At least, when I fall, I will fall among those I hope to call friends. All that I can ask is that I die among friends.”

“I won’t let you.”

Nehris hums. His voice is thicker than usual. Emotion. This intrigues her. He is a good man, a kind man. She knows he carried her back. She remembers that much. He keeps her. He has since he has met her. She is grateful for that. But this. This challenge. This refusal. He should not lie to himself. 

“Oh, ma’falon, you’re going to lose me one day. Maybe not soon, but one day. And it’s okay. I know the cost of what I do to leave a world for my people and those I love.” She tells him. Nehris moves her right arm off her face and cracks open her eyes to study him.

He is a strange kind of lovely, she thinks. Charming. Lines around his eyes that tell novels of a life spent laughing. Bags under those same eyes that tell her novels of nights spent unsleeping. A good man. The kind of man who is haunted by the things that are unkind. She likes to look at him, to study him. She finds him comforting. Steady.

Safe.

“Well, we’ll just have to find a way for it to not kill you then.” He finally says like it is a solution of any kind. The man knows even less magical theory than she does, but he still insists there’s a cure. Nehris can’t help her smile. “You know,” she tells him voice slow and low and smooth like a river stone, “you are the only one who fights this. Everyone else has accepted that I am to perish. But not you, not Gordon Blackwall, no you insist on saving me. I appreciate the sentiment, but worry for your heart, ma’falon.”

He grimaces, mouth drawing down under all that fuzz and eyebrows pulling hard to the tops of his eyelids. 

“Maybe they should think more of helping you and less of martyring you then.” He snarls. She doesn’t stop smiling. The pain is beginning to give just a little. “If any man could keep my alive by sheer force of will, it would be you.” Nehris says lightly. It does not serve to sweeten the sour look on his face. If anything, it draws him deeper into upset. She reaches her hand out to him, trembling and glowing with cracks of green light, and he takes it immediately. The pain is bad. Her face screws up like it does when she eats something too spicy. 

“Promise me that when the time comes,”

“It won’t.”

“Humor me.”

“If it comes then.”

She gives him a funny look and restarts.

“Promise me when the time comes you won’t let them burn me. I don’t want to have my body treated with their ceremonies. Take me to the Graves when that happens, plant me with the seed of a tree of your choice. Please.”

He looks like she’s just hit him in the gut. The air gushes out of his lungs and he closes his eyes too tight.

“Don’t ask me to do it, my lady.”

“I’ve no one else I would ask.”

And so Blackwall promises this sliver of a woman a proper burial if she dies in this war, and he does not feel good about it.


	14. Chapter 14

“A question, my lady,” Thom’s sleep worn voice shatters the early morning silence in Skyhold. Nehris makes a soft sound of protest from where she is sprawled across him and flails her hand desperately trying to find his mouth and quiet him before he fully wakes her. He wriggles out of her reach and sits up. Unfortunately, this leaves the sleep addled elf on his lap and she rolls over pressing her lips to his bare stomach. He shivers. “My lady, please, the sun has been up for an hour, and I’ve a question.” He can feel the grumble start in her chest and claw up her throat. 

“Fine ask.” She hisses against his skin. 

Thom swallows down any resignation he might have had and finds the courage.

“What are we doing?”

Nehris drags herself up, scaling his chest like a tree, and flops her head on his shoulder.

“Well, I am trying to sleep, and you are wide awake it seems.” She murmurs into his ear. Her breath is warm and moist and He can’t help the way the hair on the back of his neck stands at attention. Among other things. Traitorous things, bodies. Thom instinctively wraps an arm around her waist to keep her from falling off of him back onto the mattress. He’s long since learned that in the mornings, Nehris is prone to flopping. 

“That isn’t what I mean. I mean what is this, Nehris. What are we doing?”

She hums, cracks open one sea glass green eye. 

“Whatever you want, really.” Her voice is low and sultry and it isn’t at all what he want to know. Frustration bubbles unfairly in his chest and throat. He’d never have his fill of her, he knows that, but there’s time for bedding women always to be found. He’s learned this in his years. That isn’t what he’s looking for now, though. 

“Nehris, please,” His voice must crack, because she stiffens upright immediately, both eyes open and searching. 

“What’s wrong?”

And nothing is wrong but everything is wrong and he feels like he is going to vibrate out of his skin with worry. This is the fourth time this week he’s spent the night in her chambers, the fourth time they’ve woken up together, the fourth time he’s held her through the night, all just this week. And before that two, and the week before, five. But whatever this is, he doesn’t know. He never thought he’d be the kind of man who needed reassurances, but Thom also didn’t think he was the kind of man who kills children. He learns things about himself every day when he’s around her. 

“I need to know what we’re doing here. How is this going to work? Is there even a this?”

He watches her worry her lip between her teeth, brows drawn together in confusion. Her hand flutters to his brow pressing firm with concern. She thinks him feverish, and finds he isn’t, and looks more concerned. Then, just as quickly as she came to attention, hurt flashes across her features. 

Nehris rolls away from him, rips herself out of his hold, and grabs her trousers from the ground. The ground is ice cold under her bare toes and she hisses in discomfort. She’s shoving her legs through the pant legs of them when she speaks. 

“I thought there was.” Followed by fast elven under her breath. “I thought you knew that.” Nehris says very hollowly as she searches for a shirt. She needs air. She needs it now.

Thom makes his way across the ocean of the bed to grab her wrist. She freezes, halla seeing the glint of an arrowhead, and slowly brings her gaze to his hand. “No there is. I mean, for me there is I know that. I just. We hadn’t talked about it. I was worried it wasn’t that way for you. I just want to know what this is for you.” He pleas. Not his most eloquent, but she stops trying to flee. 

“This,” She says very softly and careful to avoid his gaze. “Gordon, I don’t know the human words for it.” She finally admits after a heartbeat. How could she explain it? How could she give him words that she doesn’t have? Nehris deflates, leaning back against him in just her trousers. He gladly shoulders her weight and wraps his arms around her. He rests his chin on her shoulder the hairs tickling and pricking along the sensitive skin. “It just is, and I am happy. Are you not happy?” Nehris asks. “I am happy.” He replies, plants a kiss on her neck. She melts against him. 

It isn’t a confession of love, he knows that. Thom’s not stupid enough to think she’s saying she loves him. He’s also not stupid enough to not enjoy time spent with a lovely woman. It’s better than thinking she wanted him only to not feel alone, though. She’s happy. He’s happy. That’s got to count for something. 

“You know there are rumors spreading.” He tells her.

“They can’t be worse than before.” She replies. 

He’s not sure what they are, what they have, but he knows it’s something. When he’s the only one to grace her rooms all night, he knows it’s something. When the other tease him he knows it’s something. Thom just hasn’t figured out what it is yet, and by the sound of it, neither has Nehris. She twists in his hold, brings a leg up on the bed, and meets his eyes. 

“Let them say what they want. I trust you.” She tells him adamantly.

Well, that’s good enough for him.


	15. Chapter 15

“You know, you haven’t really told us if you’re as young as you look, poppy.” Varric comments while he, Blackwall, Dorian and Nehris are traipsing about Crestwood looking for wyverns. Nehris is knelt in the mud, eyeballing tracks expertly with absolutely no grace when he asks it. And of course, Dorian has to get in on this action. “He’s right. How old is the Inquisitor of Legend, exactly?”

Nehris rises to her feet satisfied she has an understanding of the direction the beasts have wandered. 

“Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to ask a lady her age?” She teases both of them, turning to wink at the party. She’s caked in mud up to her elbows and uses it to smear some of the wisps of her hair out of her face. “I’m three and twenty.” She answers while she wipes excess mud off on the bottom of her tunic. 

“No kidding?” Varric asks while Dorian makes a choking sound. 

“Not at all. Three and twenty. My name day was a week or so before we closed the Breach.”

They all stare at her. 

“My dear friend, you are aware that this man,” Dorian gestures to Blackwall, “is officially old enough to be your great grandfather right?”

“I’m not that old.” Thom grumbles in protest. 

“Hush grandfather.” Dorian replies. 

Nehris blinks. She looks downright baffled. “Dorian, do you think me blind?” She asks very slowly as if she’s speaking to a child. Dorian instantly protests. “Do you think me dull?” She asks. He shakes his head no. Nehris nods slowly. “Of course I am aware that Blackwall is older than me. There’s silver in his beard. I can see that. However, I don’t recall caring.” Her eyes twinkle playfully. “Besides, I don’t mind. He’s got years of experience on any men my age.” And the way she says it is downright sinful. Dorian looks scandalized while Thom’s cheeks glow a soft pink. 

Varric snorts and laughs. Nehris winks at him. Varric grins back. Then she turns her attention back to Dorian and prepares for the kill. 

“Frankly, you’re all old enough to have fathered me.” Nehris says with a wicked grin. Varric and Dorian make affronted sounds while Thom laughs. “You’d be hard pressed to find a man among us who isn’t that old, my lady.” Thom comments playfully. She turns her grin to Thom. “Truly, what would the Inquisition do without our plethora of gentlemen bachelors.” She says back. Varric supports himself on the nearest fence post to keep from falling over laughing. She’s right. Not one man in the inner circle is under thirty. But no one has thought about it until now.

“It’s scandalous. The Inquisitor a lady of such youth surrounded by older experienced men at all times.” Thom tells her. They delight in how Dorian is stuck between laughing and feigning horror. “Varric, my friend, this sounds like just the thing to put into a new series of your supposedly smutty books. A new thought for you. Even better, twist it romantically enough and Cassandra won’t even know what hit her.” Nehris tells him.

If there were wyverns nearby, their laughter has certainly chased the beasts off. The group roars at the thought of that. Cassandra, drooling over a rewrite of the life she lives in and not even knowing. It amuses them so that the group decides to turn in. They’re laughing too hard for combat. Out of breath from giggling. Nehris can’t remember the last time she laughed like this.

It’s good to have a clan. Even one as strange as this.


	16. Chapter 16

Gordon Blackwall, Nehris believes with every ounce of blood in her body, is not fit to be in a cage.

Seeing him in one sends her world hurtling and spinning until the air is colored and her bones feel oddly wiggly. Bull has to carry her out when her knees buckle and her breath is shallow and catches in her ribs wrong. Has to pry her tiny fingers one by one from the cell bars. Nehris does not speak, does not weep, she just stares and gasps for air. 

Warden-Recruiter Gordon Blackwell, Veteran of the Fifth Recipient of the Silverite Wings of Valor, no, Thom Rainier Mercenary Captain and Victor of the Melee in the Grand Tourney, does not suit a cell at all.

The Inquisition has asked a lot of Nehris. It has asked her to keep her prayers silent, to dress as they please, to speak as they please, to eat as they please. It has asked her to call herself the Herald of Andraste, and to never return to her gods. It has asked her to sacrifice her people. It has asked her to cut out everything of her that doesn’t sing of their Maker. More so, it has asked her to give her very life.

She has done her best to fulfill all these things. 

They asked for her blood, her soul, her voice and eyes and breath. 

Now they ask for the only thing left in her. They ask for her center. They ask her to give up what gives her the will to fight.

They ask for her heart.

And Nehris is shocked to find this time she won’t. She has given everything, what is one more thing? But this time they cannot ask this. They cannot ask her to watch her heart march to the gallows. They cannot ask her to watch his fingers scrabble along the noose to try and get a breath. They cannot do this to her. If they take this she will have nothing left. How is she to fight the rifts and want to come back from sealing them if they take this? How is she to want to wake up and rush to breakfast if not to break bread with him? They cannot have him.

She will not allow it.

Nehris was many things before the shemlen. But if you had asked her when she was two and twenty if she was a murderer, she would have told you no. This, like so many things, is no longer the case. She sends a man to die in place of her heart and sleeps soundly knowing what belongs to her is secure and safe. She does not even remember the man’s name who she has sent to hang. She would send an army to hang before they could have what is hers. She would burn their precious capital to rubble first, and bleed all their nobles and saints one by one until the flagstones were stepping stones in a lake of wine red. This, she would do with her own hands. Inquisition or no.

Nehris has no care as to the consequences. If these humans fear her now, so be it. They should have feared her before. Dirthara ma, Shem. They have ripped everything, everything, from her. Why should she not do the same? She will burn cities, raze castles, disgrace and displace kings and queens, and cut down anyone foolish enough to try and take this last thing from her.

And she knows they know it. She sees it in the eyes of her advisors, of her new shemlen clan.

So they give him back. 

She drags her heart from the cage, along the roads back to their fortress, and demands of him the hardest thing she’s ever demanded of anyone. She demands that he be happy and free. That he forgive himself. That he knows he has reached his repentance. What will he do now? She does not care.

Nehris has chosen Thom Rainer, even if he does not choose her. And she will destroy anything that stands in his way. 

After she frees him, in the dark of a new moon light, he begs her to know why. 

“You, ma’vhenan, are all that remains of me.”

It is an answer they both wish to forget.


	17. Chapter 17

Finding food in the Hissing Wastes is damn near impossible, and Inquisition rations are, well, vile is being polite. So, when Cole returns from wherever it is he wanders with little blue robin’s eggs Nehris is quick to call for camp. While Bull and Rainier are setting up camp, Nehris and Cole move to see if they can scrounge up some more food. The Wastes have no shortage of fatty lizards and they manage to kill at least three. Cole points out a few edible cacti along the way. Soon, there is a decent camp and a slim amount of fresh food to their names. 

Solas is so kind as to create and tend a fire for them, which Nehris more than appreciates. The Wastes fluctuate wildly between too hot to safely leave a tent, burning sands that will blister your skin on impact, and frost bitten dunes that will blacken your feet with cold if you are not wise. It is brutal and unforgiving. Nehris rifles through her belongings and finds a decently thick metal mug that she often uses for boiling water or cooking. It isn’t large enough for all the food, but a few mostly sand free rocks will make for decent enough plates between rounds of cooking. 

“Thom, would you be so kind as to bring me some water?”

The entire group save for Nehris stiffens. It is so odd to hear her say that name. His name. But she says it with just as much love as anyone else’s and truly, they do not know how to follow her lead. But Thom brings her a large flask of water and helps pour a little into the mug to boil the robin’s eggs in. He leans in close to her. “My lady, might we be a bit more gentle in the transition of names?” Nehris turns and blinks at him, eyes gleaming in the din. “There is no transition. You are Thom. You are still the same as you have always been. If they cannot understand that then that is their own choice. It’s a lovely name I don’t see the issue.” She tells him firmly. He swallows. He won’t win this.

Of course she doesn’t see an issue. Nehris is big on names, not titles. It is his name and she will use it. To her, it is as kind as addressing Cassandra as Cassandra and not ‘The Seeker’. It is the same reason she wrinkles her nose at his gentle ‘my lady’s and other people calling her Inquisitor. 

Nehris hums and passes him a bag of cacti. Thom accepts it out of sheer muscle memory, and removes the contents to be cleaned. They cooked a lot together in Haven. Then a lot more on the road. He finds his dagger easily, begins removing the spines off the plants. Thom doesn’t know how to feel about how little has changed. She regards him the same, talks to him the same, kisses him the same. Nehris still wants him and he doesn’t know what to do with it. How to be deserving of it? It’s something no one can really answer. He chops the cacti into strips to be seared and heats a large flat rock near the fire pit. It will more than do the job. The fat from a lizard tail will provide the cooking grease needed to keep things from sticking, and he acquires one easily from Cole who is skinning and cleaning the creatures. 

It’s all so domestic. 

The Inquisitor’s personal party of elite men sitting around a fire cooking dinner and resting and doing idle things. Solas is repairing a rip in Bull’s ridiculously large cloak. Cole, Thom, and Nehris cooking. Bull keeping watch and sharpening his axe while whistling a soft tune. It’s strange to think that these people love and respect Nehris so much that even he, monster that he’s been revealed to be, is still welcome in the family. 

Her family.

And by the Maker did Nehris enforce it. How strange, she’s so young but has the ferocity of a mother bear when it comes to all of them treating each other well. Even Vivienne held her tongue when Nehris shot her that sour look she commanded so well. Thom suspects that most of his comrades likely have great disdain for him behind closed doors. But when Nehris is present, or even not present, they are cordial with him. Likely, out of respect for her. Or fear. Doesn’t really matter because if the Inquisitor says he gets to be in the Inquisition and sleep in her bed and eat her food, then he gets to. 

Thom hasn’t had a home in a long time. Much less one where he could use his own name. It’s a strange thought that this woman is carving a place for him whether anyone likes it or not. And a part of him really does like it. 

“Food’s on.” Nehris announces, and they all scramble to get in line.


	18. Chapter 18

Cole tattles.

Nehris is sure her friend means no harm when he informs the advisors of just how ill the Anchor has made her. But truly, his intentions don’t matter. What matters is he goes straight to Commander Rutherford, and tells him that Nehris is dying. Not in so many words, of course. In his own way. ‘The earth calls, Beyond singing in my blood. Falon’din’s messenger watching me sleep. Glittering, gleaming, the rising sun, a reverse eclipse in skin. It hungers. Creators help me, I’m falling. How can my branches grow high when all that is left is an emerald sky?’ And though Cullen does not understand that she is dying, he knows something is deeply wrong. 

And so Nehris is dragged to council and observed. Poked and prodded, and they confirm that under her too thick gloves the Anchor is indeed spreading. The veins in her lower arms glow a faint green now. Leliana determines that Nehris has begun eating far too much for a woman of her stature. Researchers begin theories. All of which, are bad. 

Nehris has a chronic fever, they determine. She is overeating to make up for the energy the Anchor is consuming. And whatever magic it is that she holds, it is not compatible with her body. It is not her magic. Thus, it is fighting her very soul for dominance, and consuming her flesh along the way.

The researchers are giddy with this news. Surely, that means the mark belonged to Andraste if the magic is not made for Nehris. 

Her new clan is not elated at this news. 

Dorian takes over the research. And why shouldn’t he? He is the brightest and best the Inquisition has to offer. The man invented a way to warp time. Of course, it was theoretical. But the rips in reality made it possible, and if that is possible, surely he can find a way to unfuse whatever magic is bound to her. Dorian studies the body. He knows every vein, every nerve. One cannot bind spirits to the dead without knowing the body. One cannot repair something enough to fight for you otherwise. 

He is brilliant. He finds something. 

The something he finds is a last resort. The mark has spread, but it’s roots have not burrowed so deep that it cannot be physically ripped away. As in, ripped from her very flesh. It will take with it anything it touches, anything it has decided to feed upon. It will cripple Nehris. It is, as always, a last resort. If Nehris seals the Breach one and for all, if she defeats Corypheus without it spreading deeper, they have found a way to let her live.

Dorian has found a way to give her a future. 

The plan is solid. Once Nehris slays the magister, they remove as much as they have to for her to live. She remains the Inquisitor in official capacity, and her inner circle takes over the combat aspect of things. 

The plan is solid until someone tells Thom.

He is furious.

How could they all sit there and talk about cutting her apart like it’s an option? She isn’t some sick animal to be put down. She is Inquisitor Nehris Lavellan. She is the one thing he has ever done right. The mark is spreading, of course it’s spreading. He’s known that for ages. But to gut her dominant hand? She’d be useless. They want her to keep being Inquisitor. How is she to be Inquisitor when she cannot write, or climb the ladder to her quarters, or dress herself? How is she to be Nehris if she cannot knock an arrow, or clutch her dagger right, or hold the reins to her Hart steady, or carefully pick plants? It isn’t as if she won’t have another hand, he knows that. But it won’t be Nehris. It won’t be her way.

Thom knows, logically, that she will be alive.

He will allow it to keep her alive.

But they have given up before they found an actual solution. They’ve all said ‘oh well hack her up’. It isn’t good enough. For more than once in this life, Thom wishes with everything in him that he was magic smart. He wishes he had all the mystical know-how of the others if only to apply himself to help her. She has given so much already. How can they be so ready to ask her to give up her very limbs? 

But if it comes to it, he won’t stop them.

He won’t lose her.

If it comes to it he is going to take her away from this place. He will not allow them to take her arm then chain her to the responsibilities forever, unable to leave. He has wanted to take her away from all of this since that very first rift. That first rift when she collapsed and seized and had spat blood for days after. They can take her arm, they can take these years of her life, but they don’t get to keep her. 

Thom already has a place in mind. A lovely little place in the Emerald Graves where the crystal grace grows thick and dappled nugs play in the sweet, clear brook just down a hill. He had seen the way her eyes widened when she saw the clearing as their merry band passed through looking for signs of red lyrium trade. The entire area smelled so crisp and green, and she had smiled. Thom has been shoving his payments from their work away for a long time. He was going to buy that land. Build a little cottage. Arm or no arm, mark or no mark, he was going to make a place for her that was all her own. 

He had already decided on how he wanted the place to look. He was going to do it. He was going to make her a hand mill, and never ask her to use it. He was going to build her boxes upon boxes for gardening. She delights in flowers and herbs, he knows. Thom was going to give her whatever he could. Whatever would make her happy.

And if he was very lucky, she would decide he makes her happy and ask him to stay. 

But they don’t get to sit around a table and talk about cutting her to pieces and demand that she still give them everything. They don’t get to take her very hand, then ask her to give the rest of her life in service. They’ve asked enough of her. He is going to give, not take. He is going to offer something, even if she doesn’t accept it. He doesn’t have to worry about that much, Cole has already told him she would like it. So, now he has to.

Nehris Lavellan has given up too much for this world. 

She deserves to have the world give something back.

Nehris deserves to live for once in her life safely and peacefully.


	19. Chapter 19

Thom sometimes wishes he were a mage.

It’s a shameful secret of his. He doesn’t wish for magic to burn people, or power to force stone from mountainside. 

No, what he covets is magic’s ability to put bloodied people straight again. 

He thinks that his dream of magic started when he was young. When his parents had cried in the other room because they couldn’t afford proper healers for little Linny. If he had been a mage, maybe he could have magicked her better. He could have kept her warm with fire magic, and soothed her fever with ice, and put Linny straight and right when the coughs wracked her tiny body. Every day he wished his magic would come in. He was a mage, see, it just takes time. Then he could save Linny and be her hero and Momma would smile that big smile she used to. If he had magic, everything would be better, because it’s magic. As he got older, he knew better. He was not a mage. He was never going to be a mage. And they were never going to be able to afford to help Linny.

He hasn’t thought about being a mage for a very long time. 

It’s a childish dream. One he gave up on when they put Linny to the pyre. He knew her body was empty, but suddenly Thom didn’t want magic. What good is magic if the mages won’t share it with little Linny? Besides, he saw the neighbor boy get dragged away when his fingertips began to spark. It’s a bad thing, magic is. Not the people who use it, of course. But a terrible fate to be born to he knows.

Thom does not want to be a mage. Hasn’t since he was a fool boy trying to save his sister.

Then he finds Nehris sobbing at the edge of the well. Her right hand is clasped knuckle-white around her left, and the glowing. The mark is sun bright bursting light through her thin, thin fingers. And she is shaking and sobbing and slick with sweat. He thinks, this is one of those rare moments where he wishes he was a mage. Maybe he could magic her pain away. Weave a little spell like Dorian does and calm that mark just a little. He wishes a lot of things. He wishes she never had that mark, or if she had to that it was painless. He wishes she would just let Solas tend it. He knows how to do so best, after all. He wishes that he didn’t notice how her wrist glows now too. How he can see it spreading, how she lies to the others and says it’s only her hand.

Nehris sees him watching her, he knows she sees him watching her, and does not care. 

The mark does not care that she has company. 

Pain stops for no man. Thom knows this well. His joints are not as kind to him as they used to be. He knows pain is demanding. 

“Would you like me to get Dorian?” He asks her, because truly his heart aches to see her like this.

“No. I am fine.” She replies through clenched teeth. Her eyes screw shut and a sharp grunt escapes her mouth. Her entire body wracks with another wave of pain. He watches her physically recoil and is useless. Thom is useless against this monster. He cannot hold a shield to the pain, cannot plant a blade in it. He cannot protect her. 

It is all very frustrating. 

“Care for company?” He asks meekly. She groans in response, head rolling back. He takes it as a yes as settles next to her. The ground is cold and damp, which is not unusual for Skyhold. 

Her hair is drenched in sweat, he notes, sticking to the sides of her head and neck. She looks even smaller with it flat like that. And since Thom is a horrible, selfish man, he pulls her to his side and holds her through her ache. Nehris melts into him, alternating between being comforted and going stiff with wave after wave of agony. He is selfish and he runs his fingers through her hair and wicks the sweat from her forehead and neck, and allows himself to feel a little guilty. She is suffering. Not only is Nehris suffering, she is suffering for them. 

He knows why she doesn’t want to see Dorian.

Dorian would be upset.

Nehris is selfish too, he knows. Selfish because she came to him with this pain, collapsing outside his workspace. Selfish because she, without words, has asked him to see this of her. He has seen this since the first rift. It does not make it easier. 

“Thank you.” She hisses between the waves. He takes to rubbing soothing circles along her side. This is not a kindness, he knows. He will regret it later and miss it all the same. He will keep himself up at night trying to recreate the feeling of Nehris leaned into him, thanking him, letting him hold her. It is not a kind thing he does to himself. But Thom has never claimed to be a kind man. 

“I hate seeing you like this.” He allows himself to be selfish. Thom will allow himself to do her this injustice, because it is fair, and she needs to hear it. “I know.” She hiss-whispers back. The episode is beginning the fade away. The time between waves of stiff pain is growing in length. He recognizes it. Thom is familiar with the sensation of Nehris relaxing into him. She will cease crying, will collapse into him, will likely pass out. Her pain is exhausting. It is a cresting battle, and there are no winners. Then, he will carry her to the Commander’s tower, and Cullen will make sure she makes it back to her rooms. 

It’s not appropriate for him to do it.

It’s easier to explain if it’s Cullen. He usually makes up some silly excuse like she was tired from training, or she fell asleep going through war strategies, or the Inquisitor has worked herself raw for the people. It is inspiring when it’s the Lion of Fereldan caring for her. Fearless leader he is. They can turn it into propaganda when it’s Rutherford. It is embarrassing when it is the lone Warden who lurks in the barn and has suspicions about his involvement with the Breach on him.

It makes his blood boil all the same. 

He will have to hand her over to a man who is better than he, and the rumors will fly like they always do. But Cullen doesn’t see her collapse. He doesn’t hold her trembling ribs steady. He does not know what she endures. And she does not kiss Cullen like she does him. She kisses Cullen like she kisses Bull, a chaste kiss on the cheek, that leaves the poor man red and confused for days. It is not the deep passion she give to Thom. It is not nights looking at constellations and laughing and holding her. She does not look at the Commander in shining armor like she does Thom.

A very terrible part of Thom is proud of that. 

So fine, he will hand her over to him. Maker, knows the bastard never sleeps. And he will make sure she is tended to and will sneak a mage to examine her and will carry her to her quarters.

And Thom will stay down with the animals like he knows he should. 

But for now, he allows himself to be selfish and enjoy her company. No one else gets to have this. 

Nehris stirs against him, makes a very soft sound. He vaguely realizes it is his name. The wrong name. But his. He inclines his head towards her, feels her fingers twine between his. She probably never calls Cullen’s hands beautiful, he thinks smugly. “Yes?” He inquires. Nehris hums. He feels the sound vibrate her tiny body through his own chest. “Do you think love exists?” She asks him very gently. 

Now that is a question. 

He thinks of his mother and father. 

“Yes.” He answers her. She makes a content sound and burrows deeper against him. She always tells him how warm he is. Thom is glad to be warm if it means she will curl up against him like a cat sunbathing. “Have you ever been in love, Gordon?” The question leaves him warm cheeked but he cannot place why. Sure, he’s had women. What man his age who likes women hasn’t? He won the Grand Melee for Andraste’s sake, of course he has had women. But that is not what she is asking. She is not asking about wanton lust, or convenient pleasure. She’s asking about care. Deep care. He loved his family, but it is also not what she is asking. He knows this. 

“I’m not sure I would know it if I had.” He answers her honestly. 

Nehris sighs a dreamy girlish sigh. 

“I’ve been in love before. A few times.” She tells him and something in him burns green and ugly. “There were a few sweet hunters in my clan. They used to pick plums with me and bring me wildflowers. It was very sweet. I liked them too. Oh, they made me feel beautiful, like I was some kind of princess. I wonder if they would think I’m still lovely now.” She says the last part bitterly and glares down at her hand, gleaming like green glass in the sun. 

Thom understands. It makes his stomach twist and his mouth bitter but he understands. She thinks this mark, this weight on her shoulders, has twisted her into something undesirable. Thom is shocked to find that for once in his life, Nehris is wrong. 

“The thoughts of silly boys mean nothing, my lady. I’ve not met a woman more lovely to look at or more worthy of love in all my life.” He reassures her solemnly. She smiles up at him. It is like the sun breaking through storm clouds. Like when a rainbow graces the Storm Coast.

“You’re very kind, but I know it is frightening to look at.” She unclamps her hand, clear green showing the veins and bones and tendons moving beneath. The gleam of the mark leaves a soft aura of light around her fingertips. He reaches down, ghosts one finger along the mark. Nehris squeezes one eye shut with pain and shivers. He pulls his touch away. 

“It’s like stained glass. Just another part of you. Lovely all the same.” He tells her. She laughs. “You are very sweet, ma’nehn.” Thom can’t help but smile at her laugh. His smile only widens at the softness of the elven coming from her mouth. He doesn’t speak the tongue, but it sounds kind and her accent rolls like water. Beautiful. 

“Out of all the boys and girls I’ve chased, and all the ones I have been in love with, you are by far my favorite, Gordon.” Nehris says with joy, voice chiming like bells, and his heart seizes in his chest torn between beating fast and stopping. Nehris Lavellan, the Inquisitor of Thedas, is so unafraid to say something like that to him. He supposes he knew she was brave. But his head is spinning and he doesn’t trust his mouth to make the right words. He squeezes her in his hold a little. She laughs. “You know, you’re my favorite too.” He manages to squeeze the words out, his heart pounding bruises in his chest. Nehris grins. 

“Walk me to my room?”

And miss a chance to hand her off to Cullen? Absolutely. 

Besides, she seems to be doing fine after this particular episode. It is a rare thing. Her being conscious after.

“Of course, Nehris.”


	20. Chapter 20

Thom Rainier.

That is his name. 

He stands in the rubble of the Temple of Sacred ashes with the Inquisitor in his arms. She is pale, weak, ripping apart that beast took nearly everything she had. But she is breathing, her pulse is jumping in her throat, and he will not let anyone else have her. She has suffered enough.

He has not been a good man. 

But if anything could make him a better man, it is this. 

He carries Nehris Lavellan back. Makes the long trek at the side of her wagon. He keeps her. He stays with her. And when the mark flares, and Dorian panics, he stays. He stays, even when he watches the wicked thing eat up her arm. After the battle, Nehris does not wake. Not long if she does, and never fully. Not without the expertise of one who studied the damn thing. Not without the man who is gone.

When they arrive back at Skyhold, he is the one who carries her to the surgeon’s table. Because if he ever wants to see her sea foam green eyes again, she has to wake up. If he ever wants to hear her laugh, see her smile, watch her kiss the faces of her family, she has to wake up. His name is Thom Rainier, and he is not a good man, but he is the man she needs. Thom will let her be angry later. Right now, he will be the monster he is. 

No more waiting. 

He makes the demand. Take it off. The others argue. They want to take time. But Solas isn’t here, and he’s the only one who woke her the first time. 

It takes templars. They attempt with blade and saw but her flesh just won’t cut. The damn thing puts up a barrier, unbreakable by conventional means. Lady Vivienne manages to pierce it momentarily with her summoned blade, but her sword is too cumbersome for such a delicate surgery. It takes templars.

The Order, and the Seeker, sap the magic. 

Dorian is the one who does the surgery. 

Thom does not leave the room. They encourage him to not see it. But he loves this woman and he will not be the one to ask them to do this, then not face it. It is bloody. Grueling. He is sick many times. Dorian does his best to retain what he can. Dorian wants to let it be clean looking at least. The roots have gone up her arm, and they must be pried out, templars holding the magic back the whole while. 

After many hours, it is over, and Dorian stitches her up crudely. They will send healing mages in to fix the worst of the internal, but with the templar treatment too much magic isn’t an option. Leaving residual energy in her will hurt. It will react to the pull. It is gruesome and horrific. They turn her arm over to Dagna. Let some good be of this. Let her be angry when she wakes. 

Thom gets the recipe from Varric. Back in Haven, back when Nehris was still the wide eyed Herald who hated killing, they had picked berries together. He remembers that. She had asked him to put her on his shoulders to get an apple from a tree, and he had been baffled because they were picking berries not apples. But he had let her anyway. When they returned to Haven, she gave the apple to her Hart, and they ate berries together. He remembers her mouth was purple and sticky, and her fingers stained. Cassandra had been irritate due to the stains in Nehris’s new clothes. 

He gets the recipe from Varric, and it takes days to get right. Thom doesn’t bake. Never has, never learned. The kitchen staff are so kind to walk him through the steps. Each time he ruins it, or burns it, they explain what went wrong. His hands are sticky with dough and he finds flour under his nails. It takes days to get right. Luckily, he has days. By the third day, they taste fine but look horrendous. He’s out of time, though. No time to perfect the recipe. The criers scream through the halls. ‘The Inquisitor has woke!’

When he sees her, he brings her blackberry tarts.

She cries, mouth stained purple, and holds his hand with her remaining one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha Trespasser, who’s she?


	21. Chapter 21

Nehris Lavellan is in recovery.

It will take years for her to adjust to the lack of her dominant hand. Everyone knows this. All of Thedas is tittering about the news. The Inquisitor sealed the sky and lost her arm in the battle, they say. It’s turned into a tale, and people are writing songs, and Varric says it is dangerously teetering on legend. The Herald of Andraste faced the First of the Darkspawn, they say, and gave her very arm to seal the sky and defeat the beast.

A lovely sentiment. 

Skyhold does nothing to suppress these lies. These lies look good. They look glorious. They do not show the agony, the suffering, the very mortality of the legendary Inquisitor. And why shouldn’t they? No one wants to sit through an epic poem about how the Inquisitor couldn’t keep food down with the pain. No one wants to hear the story of a sick and dying elf stumbling through battle after battle. So the story spreads, and the gifts flow, and Skyhold strains under the weight of it all. New warehouses are commissioned outside the great fortress to store it all.

The sky is healed, and Nehris is not, but they live to see another day.

And all of Thedas is practically crowding her sickbed to get a look at the bloodied stump of her arm. 

It will take years for her to re-learn to write. It will take years for it to become comfortable. She will take time to learn to eat with her right hand. It is all very sad and very frustrating. But none of the nobles care about such things. Have a servant feed her, have a scribe pen for her, have a handmaid wipe the sweat from her brow. To them, it is a matter of bodies. The Inquisitor need not function fully when others can do it for her. They are not Dalish. They do not understand the pride of the elves. 

Thom does. Thom knows Nehris.

He also knows wood. 

He begins the carving of a prosthetic arm for her. It won’t be functional. It will never be functional. But it will give her weight when she moves, and it will give her comfort, and if he is lucky he can make multiple. He wants them to reflect her beauty. Thom selects a beautiful ivory colored wood, birch, for the first attempt. It takes weeks to carve. He carves, and oils, and burns her vallaslin into the wood very dark. It is a poor imitation of the real thing, but never will something fake hold water to reality.

He finishes the birch prosthetic with the vallaslin and carefully carved fingernails and folds on the knuckles and has Bull help him build a harness for the joint of it. Something to strap it to the stump. Bull knows prosthetics. He’s seen plenty in his day. He helps. They make the harness out of dragon leather, stud it with stormheart decoratively. 

When they help Nehris put it on, she cries. She cries because suddenly her shirts fit again and she doesn’t have to know the sleeve oddly to keep it from dangling. She cries because it is beautiful. She cries because her boys thought of her. They thought to give her back what they could. And they do it without painting the Anchor onto the prosthetic. They give her an arm that could be hers and hers alone. They even paid attention to the vallaslin on her arms and made it match. 

When the visiting nobles see the prosthetic, they gossip. Word spreads. The Inquisitor wears a lovely wooden arm. So, craftsmen across Thedas begin sending arms and harnesses of varying material with varying bribes to the Inquisition. All of the, hoping Lady Inquisitor Lavellan will wear their arm. It becomes a fashion statement in Orlais to wear long sleeved gloves set with polished wood. Prosthetics become a beauty statement. Soon people are wearing beautifully carved wooden legs, or metal fingers with leather at the joints, or carefully treated quartz hands. It gives those who fought a way to take something back. Unknowingly, Thom starts a movement. A movement of fashionable prosthetics. Nobles take to cutting off one or two of their own fingers to replace them with ones crafted of gold and precious gems. Suddenly, masks are not the biggest fashion statement in Orlais.

It is all very ridiculous. 

Nehris turns all of the arms away, sends them to be stuffed into a warehouse. 

She will only wear Thom’s. 

And whenever the wood gets a chip, or needs oiled, or wears down too much from accidentally banging it against stone walls, he makes her another. He makes necessary repairs. He gives and gives. Truly, it doesn’t bother him. Something to keep his hands busy. Nehris is grateful.

But he knows he would rather not be here. He’d rather not her be here. He’d rather be fixing her arm in a little cottage in the Emerald Graves. The little cottage he knows he will build, once all the political chaos dies down and Nehris can step down. 

She shouldn’t have to be in Inquisitor forever.

But for now, she is, and appearances must be kept. She must look presentable and look powerful, and they help keep her that way. When she struggles to eat, it is Varric or Dorian with a gentle hand that help her with her spoon. She takes her meals in private with only her elite members. When Nehris cannot button a shirt that has come undone, it is Josephine who deftly fixes it. When she cannot hold a book open, or struggles to sign off on a document, Cassandra is there. And when Nehris cannot keep her Dalish holidays, cannot bake bread or pluck flowers or do the rites she has done since she was a child, it is surprisingly Cullen who lends her his hands. 

When she cannot sleep, Thom is the one who talks her to sleep.

Slowly, she becomes more deft with her right hand. It is still cumbersome, and her writing not passable. But the spoon shakes less when she eats soup. Nehris can lift a mug to her mouth with more grace. She struggles with buttons still, but learns to prop her false hand just so to have a solid background to force the button against. Nehris learns to brush her hair, but cannot braid it. So it falls loose down her back. Cole helps braid it some morning, slipping brightly colored blooms along the braid. 

Nehris learns to be more independent. It is hard. She cannot put on her own armor, her own regalia. She struggles to tie her boots. And yet, Thedas still bows before her. She may be missing an arm, but she still throws a mean punch. Nehris demands respect. A skill learned from Vivienne. And she impresses the whole world.

So, once the political chaos dies down, Thom finally asks her to come with him to the Graves. Call it a vacation, if she must, just to get away. And she goes with him. Slips from Skyhold, trusts her people to keep things steady. The world is told it is recovery. That the Inquisitor is recuperating from her wounds. Then, when the time stretches into months, they are told she is working to discover the cause of red lyrium. It’s a stretch, but if anyone deserves time, it’s Nehris.

Thom builds her a little cottage, and garden boxes, and watches her sit by the brook. Nehris likes to dangle her feet in the cool water and watch the nugs play, just like he knew she would. He rubs the scarred stump of her arm with elfroot salve when it aches from the rain, and helps her garden, and for once he sees Nehris sleep a whole night. Thom helps button her shirts, and ties her cloak over her shoulders, and keeps the cottage warm with cheery fires. He keeps her bed warm all on his own. He learns to cook the foods of her people, guts rabbits under her watchful eye, gives Nehris the life she deserves. Thom knows it will never be enough. But she is happy and smiles and calls him ma’nehn and vhenan, which he has come to learn are good things, so he supposes that this will have to be enough.

The Inquisition goes on. It does just fine.

Nehris Lavellan is in recovery.


End file.
